Shanghai website sells 600,000 milk boxes in an hour, sets Guinness World Record

Shanghai’s largest grocery site, Yihaodian, set a new Guinness record when it sold 30 containers, or 600,000 boxes of imported milk within an hour. An amazing achievement to be sure, but perhaps also another indicator of how much Chinese citizens really don’t trust domestic dairy (which SMCP unsurprisingly ignores):

The e-commerce site began selling varieties of imported milk from Poland, Belgium, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom at 10:00am on March 18. The milk was promoted at half price and the sale was expected to take a full day to set a new world record.But thanks to a sudden deluge of orders from netizens eager to take part in Guiness history, all 30 containers of imported milk were ordered by users by 10:53am – less than an hour after the sale’s start.Prior to the end of the sale, Charles Wharton, Records Manager of Guinness World Records, said that he was “looking forward” to the challenge.“We believe that if this challenge is successful, it will be the best proof of China’s growing purchasing power and economic condition,” Wharton said. “It will also [be proof] of China’s e-commerce miracle.

Or proof of how rightfully fearful Chinese customers are of the food industry on this side of the wall. According to a recent New Zealand survey, Chinese customers place greater importance on food sourcing than their UK counterparts. And as a result, they’re gobbling up as many imports as humanly possible, hence the latest record. At least we know it’s not just Western companies that are benefitting from China’s food safety woes.